The impossible happened. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term in Sunday’s runoff election in Brazil, overturning Flávio Bolsonaro’s first-round lead in a historic comeback. No candidate has ever lost the first round and won the second, until now. Grassroots mobilisation, alongside social welfare policies, helped turn the contest into a referendum on Brazilian democracy, rallying voters against a candidate seeking to restore the legacy of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, imprisoned for plotting a coup after his 2022 defeat. Lula’s victory suggests that defending democracy can still be a powerful electoral argument against the ascendant right.
Having already consolidated most of the leftwing vote, Lula had limited room to attract supporters of other candidates after his first-round defeat. His best chance lay in mobilising abstainers and reconnecting with working-class voters. The Workers’ party intensified its grassroots and digital campaigns, using social media influencers and messaging networks to reach supporters. Nearly 3 million more Brazilians voted in the runoff, and Lula gained ground across the country, particularly in major cities and his north-eastern strongholds. He also appealed to voters’ immediate economic concerns, drawing on a record of reducing poverty and inequality, and increasing benefits under Bolsa Família , the landmark welfare programme he launched in 2003. Lula framed the election as a choice between protecting social gains and democratic institutions, or returning to the Bolsonaro family’s attacks on both, warning that his opponent would compromise Brazil’s sovereignty by aligning himself with Donald Trump.
The implications extend far beyond Brazil. Lula’s victory interrupts a regional trend: rightwing candidates have won seven presidential elections across Latin America in the past 18 months. Two decades ago, Lula was among the leaders of Latin America’s pink tide, a succession of leftwing governments that reshaped the region’s politics and sought greater autonomy from Washington. Today, he finds himself resisting a new regional wave moving in the opposite direction, without a comparable coalition of allies.
Lula’s victory is welcome, but we shouldn’t forget that Flávio Bolsonaro won more than 48% of valid votes, demonstrating the enduring strength of a movement with substantial representation in an increasingly rightwing congress. His proposals on security and the economy appealed to voters frustrated by high living costs, including working-class Brazilians who had traditionally supported Lula. This mirrors the success of authoritarian-leaning rightwing candidates across the continent. Frustration with crime, economic insecurity and established political parties has propelled a new right promising tougher security policies and attacking progressive social agendas. From Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, to Javier Milei in Argentina, to the recent election of Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia.
The emerging rightwing alliance is, in many ways, the mirror image of the pink tide, developing in close alignment with Trump and his ambitions to reassert US dominance over the hemisphere. The relationship is mutually reinforcing: rightwing leaders who gained ground through domestic discontent look to Washington to consolidate their power, while the US relies on those same governments and movements to advance its strategic interests. In his victory speech, Lula said the surge of street support in recent weeks “was a demonstration that this country refuses to be anyone’s back yard”. His declaration directly challenges the so-called Donroe doctrine , which asserts an expanded US role in policing the region.